'Portobello Village' development from a child's perspective.

A guest blog from Morgana, aged 22months.

I have looked at the drawing of what Westway want to do and it isn't very good.  There are no cars or vans in the picture but in real life the place is full of them, making me think that the drawer can't draw cars and vans or they want to make it a dull pedestrianised area like Huddersfield town centre (I like the word Huddersfield because it almost says shudder which is what I did when I saw the drawing). Huddersfield town centre only has pound land shops, hair salons, nail bars and a Greggs. Oh and lots of expensive coffee places that cost twice as much as Wetherspoons which is the only pub left. I am not allowed beer or coffee so I don't think that is very good.

Cars on high streets are good because they make people walk on the pavement close to the shops and see what is in the windows rather than walking down the middle close to the drinkers and homeless people and the concrete planters full of dog poo and dead plants.

Vans would have been good in the drawing because it would have told me that there was still a market there because all the market people have vans for their stuff and if there were no vans there would be no stuff to sell so the market people might as well stay at home. Especially when it is cold.

I don't like the big pink thing in the drawing. It is not very good and I could make a better thing with my lego and it would be colourful not pink (even though I am a girl and supposed to like pink). This building will take up space where, on non market days, us children learn to ride bikes or skateboards, play with remote controlled cars and stuff like that. I particularly like practising my walking there and have recently moved on to an unsteady sprint. I like climbing the concrete blocks that stop the tent blowing away when it is windy.  Kids do this stuff under the tent because the park next door is full of smelly people drinking or taking drugs or letting their scary dogs run around pooing everywhere. The other nearby park in Tavistock road is just the same. I thought parks were for everybody but it seems not, these days parks are only for the aggressive disenfranchised (I found that word in my thesaurus and like the shape of it, it is nearly as good as hippopotamus).

They should have a little cafe in the park with tables and chairs for the grown ups to sit on while we play and the people who run the cafe could tell the nasty people to go away or they could get a slide shaped like a fierce dragon which would frighten them away ( and their dogs who are frightened of dragons too).

I hope Westway change their minds about this drawing. I have a new set of crayons and will do them a better one if they want or I could make them a lego model (I only have big lego at the moment because I could swallow the little stuff and I'm having enough trouble swallowing the nonsense that Westway are giving us).

People say that not enough people go to the shops under the Westway on days when the market isn't there but if they put shops there that had stuff people wanted to buy every day the shops would be full.  We need a proper toy shop, a sweet shop, a big pet shop with lots of real animals in it (not dog porn like the shop in Westbourne Park Road which is for ladies with rich husbands, not children who want to look at pets or buy a toy for their new puppy. I have a new puppy called Pandora, she is 10 weeks old and I would buy her lots of toys if there was a shop under the Westway to sell them to me) and a place full of coloured balls like at Ikea. Oh. And a Poundland!

Petition to stop Westway Development Trust from ruining Portobello Road.

Westway Development Trust are planning to develop the tented market on Portobello Road. If they succeed in their plans they will rip the soul out of the area. Westway do not own the land, they manage it on behalf of the people of the area. They have no right to do this but as RBKC/Tory poodles they naturally have no consideration for the wishes of the local community.

Please click HERE and sign the petition

My letter to Westway Development Trust:

The proposed development of the Portobello Green area is wrong for a number of reasons:

While the area is somewhat shabby and requiring some money spent on it It does not suit a development of the nature proposed. The anti-social behaviour problems cited as one reason for this 'improvement' is caused mainly by weak policing by WDT and by a lack of interest on RBKC's part in the needs of the local community. Sadly, street drinking and sleeping, angry dog ownership in order to demonstrate resentment and vandalism is endemic in our cities and will ever be so until more thought is put into how to address the problems. Building this development will not put an end to anti social behaviour; at best it will force it elsewhere in the area.

The tented market is, along with Portobello Road as a whole, quite rightly world famous. It is world famous because it is unique. It is world famous (and loved) because it allows individual traders to market their wares with affordable overheads. And believe it or not it is world famous because of its shabby originality and integrity. The proposal will destroy this uniqueness and a once vibrant thoroughfare will become just another soulless city street.

We do not need a 'fine dining restaurant' in place of the tent. The term fine dining says it all; it will not be for the benefit of the local community but of benefit to the well heeled incomers, who on the whole, from my experience, resent the local community and consider us to be rather 'infra dig'. There is enough fine dining to be had elsewhere in the area.

We do not need Westfield type shops. There are more than enough in Westfield itself.

It is horrific that the residential part of the proposal will be 'high end'. If any residential development takes place it should surely be affordable housing for the locals. Westway after all manages the land on behalf of the community and therefore I find the idea of them carrying out private developments on this land unacceptable. It wouldn't surprise me if it was illegal too.

On a personal level, as a resident of Cambridge Gardens (directly opposite the 'tent') I would like you to explain how building your shoe box on stilts and blocking our sunlight for a large part of the day, benefits us. I would also like to know how having a public balcony directly overlooking us benefits us in any way.

By all means spend some money on the area but do it in such a way that retains the dignity and the soul of one of Londons great assets.


More HERE

Orphans under the Westway.

Over 50 years ago, in the dark but more enlightened times the powers that be decided that a Motorway link should be pushed into West London in order to better serve the twin gods of Mammon and Motorcar. A whole community was disrupted and displaced by the event without any real care or consideration for that community.

The residents (mostly impoverished and a great number of them immigrants living in slum streets that were unceremoniously bulldozed to make way for the road that didn't even have the courtesy to run at ground level but arrogantly flying overhead) were rehoused without any real thought for community bonds or spirit. Post War planners and Architects were still fooling around with Brutalism, balcony high rise building and the social experiments of Bauhaus and Le Corbusier which have all proved to occupy a rather shabby cul-de-sac in the history of social housing.

The unlucky ones got to be rehoused in poorly considered estates, the even unluckier got to be herded into the abominable Trellick Tower and therefore able to look down on the Westway worm that had eviscerated their community.

But under the belly of that worm something stirred.

'Orphans' documents some of that stirring.

Under the Westway back then kids started occupying the spaces, building their utopian fantasies within the dystopian environment: discarded building materials became the wherewithal for adventure. Times were freer then, sure some kids got hurt but not as many as now where kids carry knives and will stab one another at the mention of a wrong post-code within nanny England's sterile but 'safe' environment.

Once the powers that be saw that there was potential use for the spaces they were taken away from the community under the premise that they would be developed for the benefit of said community. This is of course nonsense.

Apart from a few bays the entire area has been developed for commercial reasons with little thought for what the community really wants or needs.

'Orphans' occupies one of those few remaining bays, alongside the pop-up cinema and a splendidly tatty bar and music venue.

'Orphans' is an Art Installation by Steve Mepsted that plasters the innards of the Westway with enlarged images of how it used to be before the powers that be saw it as a means to profit.

Irony abounds at  'Orphans'.  Next to a enormous photograph of 60's children playing in a self built construct under the west way a bunch of 21st century kids have to make do with a vacant stage in front of images of 60's kids because nanny Britain deems nothing safe for our children and therefore our children have nothing safe to play with except the guns and knives of deprivation that we now give them.

Westway Trust is somehow sponsoring this. Westway Trust should be thinking long and hard about how it can ensure that the spaces under the flyover can remain of use to the community and benefit the people who need it most.

Westway Trust is one of those quasi-charitable organisations who like to be seen to be doing the right thing while they sell the birthright of the people they claim to represent to the highest bidder.

I spoke to Steve today. I said: I'm not going to review your show, I'll leave that to the professionals but I surely will moan about Westway Trust and RBKC and their desire to eradicate the indigenous population in favour of wealthy incomers.

'Orphans' is under the Westway for the foreseeable future, go and have a look.

And while you are there, grab someone from Westway Trust and ask:

Ask why the pop up cinema doesn't have proper funding, ask why all three bays will probably go to a supermarket, ask why Those 3 bays should not remain in perpetuity the domain of the community that the Westway Trust is supposed to serve.

Oops. I forgot. The Westway Trust only serves itself.

Portobello Green: A shithole 'enhancing the lives of the community'.

These images were taken in Portobello Green this afternoon,  the little green oasis littered with the detritus of the drinkers and junkies that make the place unsafe for the community. The pond life cannot even use the bin situated next to the bench.

What is WDT thinking when they say that this 'Enhances the lives of the community'. It does not.

The sign says: Alcohol free zone… Joke

even bigger joke!...